We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Saturday, February 28. 2015

Written the night before his death in 1618, this version of the last stanza of one of Raleigh's earlier poems was found in the flyleaf of his Bible in the Abbey Gatehouse at Westminster. Sir Walter was one heck of a fellow.

Even such is Time, which takes in trustOur youth, our joys, and all we have,And pays us but with age and dust,Who in the dark and silent graveWhen we have wandered all our waysShuts up the story of our days.And from which earth, and grave, and dust,The Lord shall raise me up I trust.

Saturday, February 21. 2015

I bought a dollar and a half’s worth of small red potatoes,took them home, boiled them in their jacketsand ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.Then I walked through the dried fieldson the edge of town. In middle June the lighthung on in the dark furrows at my feet,and in the mountain oaks I overheard the birdswere gathering for the night, the jays and mockerssquawking back and forth, the finches still dartinginto the dusty light. The woman who sold methe potatoes was from Poland; she was someoneout of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglassespraising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetablesat the road-side stand and urging me to tasteeven the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way,she swore, from New Jersey. “Eat, eat,” she said,“Even if you don’t I’ll say you did.”

Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and truethey must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,the glass of water, the absence of light gatheringin the shadows of picture frames, they must benaked and alone, they must stand for themselves.My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965before I went away, before he began to kill himself,and the two of us to betray our love. Can you tastewhat I’m saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinchof simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,it stays in the back of your throat like a truthyou never uttered because the time was always wrong,it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

Saturday, January 31. 2015

Yet, haply, in some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, The wordling's eyes shall gather dew, Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew; And dear and early friends the few Who yet remain shall pause to view These Flemish pictures of old days; Sit with me by the homestead hearth And stretch the hands of memory forth To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze! And thanks untraced to lips unknown Shall greet me like the odors blown From unseen meadows newly mown, Or lilies floating in some pond, Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond; The traveller owns the grateful sense Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, And, pausing takes with forehead bare The benediction of the air.

Ahhh, the benediction of the air. Read the entire wonderful but old-fashioned-sounding 1865 poem by the great north of Boston newspaper editor and abolitionist here.

He made a lot of money from that poem. Whittier's home, to which the poem refers, stands in Haverhill, MA. It's a sentimental poem you can read to the kids - with feeling! Especially on a snowbound day.

Friday, January 23. 2015

Dylan's recording on Empire Burlesque is better and deeper than this one with Patti Smith, but this is all I could find.

The remarkable lyrics:

Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riversideThey're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slideI live in another world where life and death are memorizedWhere the earth is strung with lover's pearls and all I see are dark eyes.

A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayerSome mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhereBut I can hear another drum beating for the dead that riseWhom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.

They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposesThey tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it isBut I feel nothing for their game, where beauty goes unrecognizedAll I feel is heat and flame, and all I see are dark eyes.

Oh, the French girl, she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheelHunger pays a heavy prize to the falling gods of speed and steelOh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that fliesA million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.

Tuesday, January 20. 2015

Beechwood fires burn bright and clearIf the logs are kept a yearStore your beech for ChristmastideWith new holly laid besideChestnuts only good they sayIf for years 'tis stayed awayBirch and firwood burn too fastBlaze too bright and do not lastFlames from larch will shoot up highDangerously the sparks will flyBut Ashwood green and Ashwood brownAre fit for a Queen with a golden crown

Oaken logs, if dry and oldKeep away the winters coldPoplar gives a bitter smokeFills your eyes and makes you chokeElmwood burns like churchyard mouldEven the very flames burn coldHawthorn bakes the sweetest breadSo it is in Ireland saidApplewood will scent the roomPears wood smells like a flower in bloomBut Ashwood wet and Ashwood dryA King may warm his slippers by.

Saturday, January 17. 2015

The keen stars were twinkling,And the fair moon was rising among them,Dear Jane.The guitar was tinkling,But the notes were not sweet till you sung themAgain.

As the moon's soft splendourO'er the faint cold starlight of HeavenIs thrown,So your voice most tenderTo the strings without soul had then givenIts own.

The stars will awaken,Though the moon sleep a full hour laterTo-night;No leaf will be shakenWhilst the dews of your melody scatterDelight.

Though the sound overpowers,Sing again, with your dear voice revealingA toneOf some world far from ours,Where music and moonlight and feelingAre one.

Shelley was not a typical Maggie's Farm sort of fellow.He was a fan of all of the hip and rebellious ideas of the early 1800s: vegetarianism, free love, atheism, (and anti-monarchism and related radical politics of the time), and he always seemed to be chasing 16 year-old girls.

Saturday, January 3. 2015

The Gods of the Copybook Headings, 1919 (here's what a copybook is, and, by "markets," he means the political speakers in the marketplace of ideas)

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turnThat Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would comeThat a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.But when we disarmed, they sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrewAnd the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was trueThat All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make FourAnd the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of ManThere are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world beginsWhen all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Saturday, November 29. 2014

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born.I cannot think that he, who then loved most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.But since this god produced a destiny,And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be, I must love her that loves not me.

Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much, Nor he in his young godhead practised it.But when an even flame two hearts did touch, His office was indulgently to fitActives to passives. CorrespondencyOnly his subject was; it cannot be Love, till I love her, who loves me.

But every modern god will now extend His vast prerogative as far as Jove.To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.O! were we waken'd by this tyrannyTo ungod this child again, it could not be I should love her, who loves not me.

Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I, As though I felt the worst that love could do?Love might make me leave loving, or might try A deeper plague, to make her love me too;Which, since she loves before, I'm loth to see.Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be, If she whom I love, should love me.

Saturday, November 15. 2014

First, her tippet made of tulle,easily lifted off her shoulders and laidon the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a morecomplicated matter with mother-of-pearlbuttons down the back,so tiny and numerous that it takes foreverbefore my hands can part the fabric,like a swimmer's dividing water,and slip inside.

You will want to knowthat she was standingby an open window in an upstairs bedroom,motionless, a little wide-eyed,looking out at the orchard below,the white dress puddled at her feeton the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarmentsin nineteenth-century Americais not to be waved off,and I proceeded like a polar explorerthrough clips, clasps, and moorings,catches, straps, and whalebone stays,sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebookit was like riding a swan into the night,but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,how her hair tumbled free of its pins,how there were sudden dasheswhenever we spoke.

What I can tell you isit was terribly quiet in Amherstthat Sabbath afternoon,nothing but a carriage passing the house,a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhalewhen I undid the very tophook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,the way some readers sigh when they realizethat Hope has feathers,that reason is a plank,that life is a loaded gunthat looks right at you with a yellow eye.

Saturday, November 8. 2014

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley (1792-1822) led one heck of a rebellious life - a classic poet's life full of tragedy,
unconformity, love, and pain.

Saturday, October 25. 2014

I would build a cloudy HouseFor my thoughts to live in;When for earth too fancy-looseAnd too low for Heaven!Hush! I talk my dream aloudI build it bright to see,I build it on the moonlit cloud,To which I looked with thee.

Cloud-walls of the morning's grey,Faced with amber column,Crowned with crimson cupolaFrom a sunset solemn!May mists, for the casements, fetch,Pale and glimmering;With a sunbeam hid in each,And a smell of spring.

Build the entrance high and proud,Darkening and then brightening,If a riven thunder-cloud,Veined by the lightning.Use one with an iris-stain,For the door within;Turning to a sound like rain,As I enter in.

Build a spacious hall thereby:Boldly, never fearing.Use the blue place of the sky,Which the wind is clearing;Branched with corridors sublime,Flecked with winding stairsSuch as children wish to climb,Following their own prayers.

In the mutest of the house,I will have my chamber:Silence at the door shall useEvening's light of amber,Solemnising every mood,Softening in degree,Turning sadness into good,As I turn the key.

Be my chamber tapestriedWith the showers of summer,Close, but soundless - glorifiedWhen the sunbeams come here;Wandering harpers, harping onWaters stringed for such,Drawing colours, for a tune,With a vibrant touch.

Bring a shadow green and stillFrom the chestnut forest,Bring a purple from the hill,When the heat is sorest;Spread them out from wall to wall,Carpet-wove around,Whereupon the foot shall fallIn light instead of sound.

Bring the fantasque cloudlets homeFrom the noontide zenithRanged, for sculptures, round the room,Named as Fancy weeneth:Some be Junos, without eyes;Naiads, without sourcesSome be birds of paradise,Some, Olympian horses.

Bring the dews the birds shake off,Waking in the hedges,Those too, perfumed for a proof,From the lilies' edges:From our England's field and moor,Bring them calm and white in;Whence to form a mirror pure,For Love's self-delighting.

Bring a grey cloud from the east,Where the lark is singing;Something of the song at least,Unlost in the bringing:That shall be a morning chair,Poet-dream may sit in,When it leans out on the air,Unrhymed and unwritten.

Bring the red cloud from the sunWhile he sinketh, catch it.That shall be a couch, with oneSidelong star to watch it,Fit for poet's finest Thought,At the curfew-sounding;Things unseen being nearer broughtThan the seen, around him.

Poet's thought, not poet's sigh!'Las, they come together!Cloudy walls divide and fly,As in April weather!Cupola and column proud,Structure bright to see -Gone - except that moonlit cloud,To which I looked with thee!

Let them! Wipe such visioningsFrom the Fancy's cartelLove secures some fairer thingsDowered with his immortal.The sun may darken - heaven be bowed -But still, unchanged shall be,Here in my soul, that moonlit cloud,To which I looked with THEE!

Saturday, October 18. 2014

SCARUSOn our side like the tokened pestilenceWhere death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt—Whom leprosy o’ertake—i’ th’ midst o’ th’ fight,When vantage like a pair of twins appeared,Both as the same, or rather ours the elder,The breese upon her, like a cow in June,Hoists sails and flies.

Poetic language is an intensification of the use of words. Prof Booth likes to look at the "physics" of poetic language. When a person gets into a poetry state, whether writing or reading, the mind can take over and let the inner physics of the thing just happen the same way you can hit a moving car with a snowball without knowing the math and the brain physiology of it.

I found this essay to be fascinating, and had to re-read it: Shakespeare’s Genius Is Nonsense - What the Bard can teach science about language and the limits of the human mind. One quote:

As a playwright and businessman, of course, Shakespeare had a serious interest in shielding his audiences from the mechanics of his verse. In addition to its concordance with the 16th-century concept of sprezzatura—lightness, ease, the ability to make even the most difficult things look effortless—a play crafted to maximize delight helped Shakespeare fill theatres in a way that a lot of visible sweating over the lines might not have. For every ingenious device that Booth describes in the verse, he brings as much attention to the effort that went into keeping it unobtrusive. His theory may explain the ineffable mind-states that poetry creates in us: poetic experience as the interaction of barely perceptible mental processes whose delicate, scintillating play is usually washed out by the spotlight of conscious attention.

What Booth so elegantly shows us is how Shakespeare can free us from ourselves. His lush, prismatic verse grants us “a small but metaphysically glorious holiday” from how we usually comprehend language, a holiday that is in turn “a brief and trivial but effectively real holiday from the inherent limitation of the human mind.” Rather than plunging into the abyss of not-knowing, we soar above it. We are not falling, but flying.

Saturday, October 11. 2014

On January 20, 1961, Robert Frost spoke at John F. Kennedy's inauguration. The snow-glare made it impossible for him to read his new poem for the occasion (he was 87 years old), so he recited a better poem, The Gift Outright, from memory.

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land's.She was our land more than a hundred yearsBefore we were her people. She was oursIn Massachusetts, in Virginia.But we were England's, still colonials,Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed.Something we were withholding made us weak.Until we found out that it was ourselvesWe were withholding from our land of living,And forthwith found salvation in surrender.Such as we were we gave ourselves outright(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)To the land vaguely realizing westward,But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,Such as she was, such as she would become.

Saturday, October 4. 2014

When you sit in the blind awaiting the flightOf the white-breasted northern sprig,While they circle high and think to light,And they look so close and big,You whisper your pard, as you both crouch low,“Now! – Don’t wait too long!”You shoot – too far – and off they go;Whatever you do is wrong!

Then you curse yourself for a fool greenhorn,Your pride has had a blow;Sullen you sit and smoke and mourn,When – in comes a bunch, fair low!You watch them circle ‘round and ‘round,“Just let them work along!”When – off they swing, southward bound;Whatever you do is wrong!

And so, through life, a poor wretch triesTo do what he thinks is right,To place his funds so that when he diesHis family’ll be sitting tight;To raise the young with the best in mind,And sometimes it works like a song,But often he finds like the man in the blind,Whatever you do is wrong!

Still, I think that our God who sits in His sky,And watches each man in his blind,When it comes time for the hunter to die,Surely, He’ll keep in mindThat each tried to do what it seemed he ought,And He’ll put us where we belong;For He’ll understand the fellow that thought,Whatever he did was wrong!

Saturday, September 20. 2014

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a treeToward heaven still,And there's a barrel that I didn't fillBeside it, and there may be two or threeApples I didn't pick upon some bough.But I am done with apple-picking now.Essence of winter sleep is on the night,The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.I cannot rub the strangeness from my sightI got from looking through a pane of glassI skimmed this morning from the drinking troughAnd held against the world of hoary grass.It melted, and I let it fall and break.But I was wellUpon my way to sleep before it fell,And I could tellWhat form my dreaming was about to take.Magnified apples appear and disappear,Stem end and blossom end,And every fleck of russet showing clear.My instep arch not only keeps the ache,It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.And I keep hearing from the cellar binThe rumbling soundOf load on load of apples coming in.For I have had too muchOf apple-picking: I am overtiredOf the great harvest I myself desired.There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.For allThat struck the earth,No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,Went surely to the cider-apple heapAs of no worth.One can see what will troubleThis sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.Were he not gone,The woodchuck could say whether it's like hisLong sleep, as I describe its coming on,Or just some human sleep.

Saturday, September 13. 2014

A hungry feeling Came o'er me stealing And the mice were squealing In my prison cell And that auld triangle went jingle-jangle All along the banks of the Royal Canal

Oh! To start the morning The warden bawling "Get up out of bed, clean out your cell!" And that auld triangle went jingle-jangle All along the banks of the Royal Canal

Oh! the screw was peeping And the lag was sleeping As he lay weeping For his girl Sal And that auld triangle went jingle-jangle All along the banks of the Royal Canal

On a fine Spring evening The lag lay dreaming And the sea-gulls were wheeling High above the wall And that auld triangle went jingle-jangle All along the banks of the Royal Canal

Oh! the wind was sighing And the day was dying As the lag lay crying In his prison cell And that auld triangle went jingle-jangle All along the banks of the Royal Canal

In the female prison There are seventy womenIt's with all of them That I'd like to dwell Then that auld triangle could go jingle-jangle All along the banks of the Royal Canal.

This song was written by Irish playwright Brendan Behan for his play The Quare Fellow (slang for a condemned man). A lag is slang for a new prisoner. The song has been performed by The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, and The Pogues, and is recorded on one of Bob Dylan's practice "basement tapes" with The Band in a folk-rock style.

Saturday, September 6. 2014

SHE was a Phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.

I saw her upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman too! Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin-liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A Creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.

And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A Being breathing thoughtful breath, A Traveller between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.